Job overview

Senior Clinical Psychologist Band 8a  (Clinical Psychologist Band 7 Preceptorship leading to Band 8a role available)

Location: Midlands Centre for Spinal Injuries, Oswestry

Band 7 candidates (including newly qualified applicants) are welcome to apply for this position.

NSCHT offers a preceptorship package for newly qualified psychologists with a view to being uplifted to an 8a Senior Clinical Psychologist upon successful completion of preceptorship.

We have a position within our Specialist Spinal Injuries for a Senior Clinical Psychologist to work alongside our experienced principal psychologist, within this challenging but incredibly rewarding role. 

This is an opportunity to work as part of a specialist service, providing psychological rehabilitation in a medical setting for patients following spinal injuries. The role involves direct patient interaction, family engagement, and collaboration with the wider multidisciplinary team.

Key opportunities

Provide psychological support for patients in an acute medical setting post-spinal cord injury

Opportunity to conduct group work, attend ward rounds, goal planning meeting and provide psychological interventions

Work with a range of clients, including those with neurodiversity and pre-existing mental health difficulties in the context of supporting them to cope following a life changing injury

Hours are Monday – Friday (can be worked flexibly) 

This is an excellent opportunity for those who are passionate about rehabilitation.

Main duties of the job

Provides a life-long psychological service for patients experiencing significant psychological distress secondary to spinal injury who are inpatients at the Midland Centre for Spinal Injuries.

Manages a caseload of appropriate size, complexity and severity, including people who have complex problems which may present as challenging, disorganised or aggressive behaviour. Problems may be complicated by physical disability, impaired cognitive functioning, other physical illnesses and issues related to trauma.

Provides specialised psychological assessments. Interprets complex psychological data from a variety of sources including neuro/psychometric tests, self-report measures, structured observations and interviews with patients, carers and MDT staff members.

Produces psychological formulations of patients’ difficulties, based upon analyses of assessment findings and psychological theory. Sensitively documents and feeds back formulations to the client and, where appropriate and with client consent, to carers, staff, the client’s GP and the referring agency.

Exercises autonomous clinical responsibility for the development and implementation of psychological interventions, rehabilitation strategies and psychological therapy, adjusting and reformulating as appropriate on the basis of feedback from clients, carers and staff.

Offers support and consultation to facilitate hospital staff in delivering general psychological care and monitoring psychological care goals with inpatients.

Working for our organisation

As a Trust we remain bold and ambitious with plans for both service and system collaborative transformation over the coming years to improve the health and wellbeing of our local people through high quality care.

We pride ourselves on ensuring our team has their wellbeing put first and as such provide a range of wellness opportunities including flexible working. 

We are committed to the Greener NHS national ambition to becoming the world’s first ‘carbon net zero’ national health system by 2045 (Greener NHS (england.nhs.uk). As part of this, sustainability is embedded in our strategy as one of our four key enablers. In order to deliver on this commitment, we recognise that we need a workforce that is as passionate as we are about achieving these goals, for the benefit of our service users, workforce, local communities and the planet alike.  For 2024/2025, we have launched our “Proud to be Green” engagement campaign which is aligned to the targets set out in our Green Plan.  As a Trust, you can be assured that we will commit to supporting you in working towards our net zero ambitions, set out in our Green Plan, through our sustainability programme”. 

 The Trust is committed to ensuring that a diverse workforce is representative and inclusive at all levels. We would very much welcome applications from all under-represented groups including women, people with disabilities, people from global majority backgrounds, and those from the lesbian, gay, bi and trans communities.